Five years after “Crisi”. Update on facts, considerations and strategies

After a period of silence, this communication is an update to all who can and want to read about the facts, viewpoints and perspectives I have at the moment, since I have been holding my political and personal activity in secrecy for more than seven months.

The repressive answer I have recieved until now from the Spanish legal system has not surprised me, nor does it surprise me that they breech my defence rights, over and over again, even if these are recognized by their own Constitution. Nevertheless, my lack of surprise doesn’t imply a lack of action.

• Right to be informed on the process, infringed. • Right to choose witnesses, infringed. • Right to choose freely my lawyer, infringed. • Right to have a defence lawyer, infringed.

It looks as if the second section of the Provincial Court of Barcelona has invented a new law against all odds, saying that an accused who is in hiding loses his fundamental rights in relation to the process of defence, even if the universal declaration of human rights is supposed to be valid for all human beings under any circumstance.

Therefore, more than 210 days after accepting the resignation of my previous lawyer, the judges still have not allowed me to designate another one. More than 210 days without lawyer, 180 of which under order of direct arrest.

What shouldn’t surprise us is that these things happen even when verified data warn us about the lack of separation of powers within this State, like for example: the fact that the Constitutional Court President an active member of the government’s ruling party or that the complicity of different powers of this State with the same banks that accuses me has been normalised, even after millions of euros in State loans have disappeared something which has never been officially denounced.

In fact, even a sector which is normally not prone to mobilize itself, like justice workers have been,has now called an indefinite strike in Catalonia, to protest, amongst other things, against the growing privatization and recentralization of different judicial processes. For example, it is expected that a Public Prosecutor, who hierarchically depends on the General Public Prosecutor (which has been directly designated by State governament) , will follow a case, as supposed to an independent agent like a judge.

As I have already expressed in previous communications, this is not my way of addressing conflicts, and I do not accept to be part of a system of rights and obligations in which an external authority can judge me and condemn me to prison without even listening to my arguments. For this reason, in collaboration with a working group formed by scholars and professionals on restorative justice, we are preparing a restorative project that really allows all the parts involved and affected to equally take part in the conflict resolution, with openness and respect. The standpoint of respect to my personal dignity is the only perspective with which I will take part in a judicial process and no other.

While we prepare the restorative project, we are evaluating whether to carry out suitable legal actions against the daily infringement of my defence rights. Although I don’t feel in any way bound to this legal system, this is still the only language that some people and institutions understand. Therefore sometimes it is necessary to use this language, to avoid leaving actions like these un addressed, as they may affect other people.

I publish this update today because on this same date, 5 years ago, the publication “Crisi” saw the light. In it, besides the statement that «I have “stolen” 492.000€ to those who most stole from us in order to denounce them and build alternatives for society», I incorporated a whole range of serious critiques to the banking system, which now seem insufficient in relation to the facts which have taken place during the permanent crisis in which we have lived ever since.

Taking advantage of the fact that this bank expropriation was presented on the 17th of September of 2008 as an individual action (even though contextualized in a much wider social movement), several media and the legal system itself have sought to depoliticize the action in order to introduce it like an isolated fact, moving it away from its political meaning as a denouncement and, especially, as an impulse to construct a collective process.

Today, taking into account that the Spanish legal system includes a law by which all crimes punished by less than 5 years of prison will go in to prescription five years after they happened, I can say that this action would not have been possible without the contribution of many people . Of paramount importance have been all the processes of consensus decision which allowed us to collectively choose how to use much of those funds and how to carry out the projects. Being aware of the origin of the money gave it a revolutionary political meaning with which we aim to develop alternatives to the established system which it would not have had if it had only been an individual action.

Perhaps now, taking advantage of the time gone by, it’s be more feasible for other people to share how they experienced this action and about how those funds were allocated.

However, as I said, the reasons that justified my actions have not prescribed, and that’s why I continue providing support to other initiatives who t seek to similarly. For the same reason I have not given up taking advantage of and poking new security holes in this banking system whose only aim is to get profits out of people’s savings. Because of this, Spanish police is now hunting me not only for the action explained in 2008, but also for another one, although smaller, realised in 2011.

While banks continue to keep the monopoly to issue legal money, while they continue to loan with high interests the money they created at no cost by State agreements and which should have been common resources, while they continue unpunished in their speculative drift, generating holes of billions of Euros that cause social cut backs all around, while they make themselves responsible of personal dramas evicting people from their houses…, while all this continues to happen it will equally be legitimate to recover with collective audacity as much as we can of this defrauded money and dedicate it to projects which are really in the interest of the common good.

Living this experience, needing to hide in order to perform actions which I find coherent with my view of the revolution doesn’t take away my sleep. In fact, all these days with reduced socialization and no public presence have not led only to a number of limitations but above all they have been usefull in allowing me to access and deepen some learnings which made me evolve in those strategies which I consider important for social transformation. Therefore I took some time to organize all this new knowledge and ideas, developing new projects which I find particularly motivating and urgent today.

One of the topics that caught my attention these months is how all the efforts made in the last few years, to hide the technological development of Internet giants and their connections with U.S. government (and other governments around the world), aimed at controlling people through the Internet, has been shattered because one single person has dared to risk going public and his testimony has been all around the world. The same happened before with thousands of secret documents, released by WikiLeaks and their brave reporters.

This unquestionable evidence of global espionage will accelerate the growth of specific technology and the use of encrypted communication tools which will make it almost impossible for these agencies to keep control of people’s information.

These are significant examples of the reduction of historical imbalances between the dominating power and people’s freedom.

But there is much more. This year we witnessed the explosion of decentralized digital currency, which, with p2p technology and cryptography, are currently being used to maintain anonymity and privacy in an area, the economic exchange, the control of which is the basis for the State’s economy. After many centuries of monopoly on the issue of currency by central banks and private banks; after the states have devoted enormous resources to control and oversee the economy of the lower classes … now, thanks to free software a technology has been designed and shared which not only allows to move values from anywhere in the world without commissions, but also prevents these actions from being overseen.

And there is even more. 3D manufacturing technology allows the manufacturing of all types of parts and devices with a single machine of less than 1 cubic meter, the designs of which are shared on the network so other people can also make them without having to conceive them again. Moreover, this technology is set to put limits on the control exerted by the State, while patents are losing importance just as they did years ago on copyright licensing about intellectual propriety.

Therefore, technologies such as encryption, bitcoin and 3D printers are the spearhead of a whole range of revolutionary technologies that only just started to enhance the freedom of individuals and of self-organized networks on the fringes of the power, putting a sell by date on the hegemony of the States-nation as we have known them in the last decades. The control systems of economic activity based on the coercion and the monopoly of violence, have their days counted. In the future, only through conviction, education, and sincere work for the common good it will be possible to joint resources to use them for the general interest.

In this context, all those who work for an holistic revolution that includes the building of new structures of social and political self -organization and at the same time for a deep transformation of human beings that recovers value of community have an even bigger challenge ahead than we had imagined. It is really important, if not indispensable, that we can show –with the diffusion of this vision and practices– that it is possible to generate a model of social and economic organisation without any type of coercion, voluntary and without the need to confine itself to any specific political territory.

Therefore, while I continue collaborating even with the difficulties due to my physical absence during the development of the Cooperativa Integral Catalana, I think it is important that this very moment marks a point between a before and an after, in a particular important way: to priorize new actions of networking and communication between initiatives at planetary level.

Logically, the silence that accompanied the RADI collective, after having announced its creation just over half a year ago, has had to do with all this strategic rethinking. Therefore, you will hear about it soon again.

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[…] he used the money to pay the printing costs for Crisis and to invest in various social projects. http://enricduran.cat/en/statements172013. A lengthy profile of Duran can be found here: Nathan Schneider, “On the Lam with Bank Robber […]

Enric Duran i Giralt

Enric Duran i Giralt was born on the 23d of April 1976 at 12.30 noon in Vilanova i la Geltrú, in the shire of Garraf. In this page we trace his political trajectory since he began to be involved with social and political movements. Following the chronological thread we can also see how the political, social and economical context has been changing, until the present systemic crisis has reached a free fall stage which shows the misery of the capitalist system. In this climate, where everything seems tragic, other practices are trying to paint new ways and give inspiration to keep on the long path towards empowerment and self direction.